Digital media products may be widely used for entertainment, education, and/or other purposes. As used herein, the term ‘digital media’ may include digital audio, digital video, and/or digital images which may be embodied in digital media products including, for example, compact discs, digital video discs, video game products, digital television products, memory devices that include digital media files, and/or digital media files that may be distributed over computer networks, such as the World Wide Web and/or other wireless and/or mobile networks, via satellite, and/or via cable networks.
With the proliferation of digital media products, concerns have been raised by owners of copyright and/or other intellectual property rights in digital media products. These concerns have led to the use and/or proposal of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. DRM provides for secure distribution of digital content. DRM technologies may enable authorized users of a digital media product use the product, and may include the ability to copy the product under certain circumstances. DRM technologies may also prohibit unauthorized uses by the authorized users, such as sending the digital media product by email and/or publishing the digital media on the worldwide web, and may also prohibit use by unauthorized users. The basic components of DRM technology may include the digital media content, which may be transferred between the content provider and a user in a secure fashion, and the rights, which may represent the permissions, obligations, and/or constraints associated with the use of the digital media content. For example, the rights may take the form of a separate “key” that may be required to be available to a multimedia device in order to enable rendering of the digital media content.
There may be a relatively small percentage of individuals who can successfully bypass the DRM mechanisms on a multimedia device and/or the copy protection constraints placed on digital media content. However, when one of these “pirates” successfully bypasses such copy protection constraints and provides a copy of the digital multimedia content on a publicly accessible network, such as the Internet, there may be a significantly larger percentage of individuals who may be skilled enough to locate and download the “cracked” digital content. These “lazy pirates” may lack the skills and/or motivation to actually bypass DRM mechanisms, but may be responsible for most of the unauthorized access and/or distribution of protected digital content.